The Best Damn Turkey Show Ever!

Grace tackles a 20lb Turkey and 2lbs of bacon in her first Holiday Special. Bonus: Meet Zelda the Wild Turkey of Manhattan!






Recipe for Best Damn Turkey Ever
20 lb Turkey, rinsed and dried with paper towels
2 lb Bacon, preferably Oscar Meyer, not hickory or other flavor

Steps

Remove bird from fridge one hour before cooking to come to room temperature, this ensures even cooking.
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Slide your hands under the skin and gently tuck one pound of bacon slices between skin and meat.
Cover entire bird with second pound of bacon.
Cover breast with tinfoil and roast. Look here for an online calculator that will tell you how long to cook your turkey.
Remove tinfoil for last hour of roasting to brown bacon.
When done let it rest for 1/2 to 1 hour to let juices go back into the meat.

Pot Roast Done Vloggy-Style
Watch what happen when Grace gets personal and cooks up a big hunk of beef.

My Geek Peeps at the Brooklyn 2.0 Meetup

I was feeling the New Media/Video Podcasting/Blogger love last night at the Brooklyn 2.0 Meetup. This meetup attracted a great crowd to Mooney's Pub in Park Slope thanks to organizer Eric Rochow of GardenFork. Check out his terrific recipe for blueberry pancakes on his video podcast GardenFork.tv; in this same podcast you’ll learn how to fell a tree with a chainsaw.

Old friends, like Caleb Clark stopped in. Caleb challenged me to a FearlessCooking episode using his lox recipe, definitely a -white glove smacked against the face- moment for me. Charles Hope of Blip.tv talked code with David of social networking site Ning, I left them to it after noticing that the conversation started sounding like, “beep, beep, beep” type robot talk to me. John of Google was another code monkey floating around talking smack about Bangor, Maine small town living and telling me about working on iGoogle- lots more cool features rolling out there soon. Yahoo better watch out. Talked with Stephen Kline of Xanga.com about the challenges of doing live video on the net.

Had a great conversation about the merits of Marina Sirtis as Counselor Deanna Troi in Star Trek. Consensus was - she's hot. Glad I stopped in for another fun night out with my Geek Peeps.

Grace and Christopher Walken in the Kitchen

Raise your hands if you think I should get in the kitchen with Christopher Walken. Exactly. Chris needs some Fearless Cooking in his life. I can tell.

In this video he makes a really nice roast chicken. I'll have to buy one of those upright roaster contraptions he uses. I'd bet he gets more crispy skin on his bird than I do. I also approve of how generous he is with the salt.

The Cult of the Oyster at Stone Park Cafe

Pleasure. Lately I’ve been finding it every weekend in Park Slope. It’s gotten so bad that I wake up on Monday morning thinking, “Only 5 more days until heaven.” I’ve found myself on the F train daydreaming about having them.

What I’m pining for are the perfectly cooked, enormous fried oysters I’ve been having for brunch every Saturday for the past few weeks - and sometimes if I’m really strung out I go back for seconds on Sundays. They’re at Stone Park Café in Park Slope, Brooklyn at 5^th Ave and 3^rd St.

Tasty well seasoned thin crispy batter outside, perfectly cooked ridiculously large oysters, that are often the size of a plum inside. Good God they are good! They come on top of eggs cooked with a very good quality bacon, green onions and topped with cheddar. The first time in the restaurant the menu said the oysters were on top of a frittata, but I asked for my eggs cooked “soft”. I’m sure that pissed off the chef. I do understand what a pain in the ass it is for orders to be changed up during a busy brunch, but I am so, so sick of overcooked eggs. And, I really wanted something crispy on the plate, the oysters, with something soft, the eggs.

I also hold the potatoes and toast and want greens. (I know pain in the ass, again) They do a really simple delicious sauté with the greens with lots of roasted garlic. I’ve been converting lots of friends including a cookbook author Lyn Stallworth and AnotherFoodBlogger to the Stone Park Oyster Cult and everyone agrees that the food is phenomenal and prepared by guys who really know what they’re doing and care about what they sling on the plate. If you're looking for me some Saturday morning you know where I’ll be, at Stone Park Café, engaging in full on oyster gluttony.

What:
Hangtown Fry – that’s what it’s called on the menu. Crispy perfectly cooked oysters on a bed of eggs, bacon and cheese.

Where:
Stone Park Cafe
5^th Ave and 3^rd Street

Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY

Dishwashing as Meditation

I just finished hand washing a load of dishes and realized my breathing had slowed and I wasn’t obsessing over what I needed to do next. I think I’ve discovered a new form of mediation for myself; the new yoga!

There was something satisfying about it. The sink was a disaster – and now it’s not. Cleanliness and order has been restored. Now how do I apply this to everything else I’ve been putting off in my life?

In honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, I bring you How to Eat like a Pirate!

After looking at the options it is clear that talking like a pirate is way more fun than eating like one. Have a look at the recipe for Hard Tack. I'm pretty sure I have the same recipe for making inedible Christmas ornaments.

Hard Tack

• Mix one teaspoon of salt with one pound of flour.
• Add enough water to make a very stiff dough.
• Flatten the dough to about 1/2 inch and cut it into about 4 inch circles. Punch holes in each circle with a fork.
• Bake in a flat pan at 250 degrees for two or three hours.

In Food News:
Don't eat the Dole!
Dole is hurting after having to recall 5,000 bags of lettuce yesterday. Go to your fridge now and toss out that bag of lettuce. 11 people were sickened and 2 hospitalized.

5,000 bags of salad mix sought in recall, Dole says. Most packages were sold in U.S.

By Stephen J. Hedges | Washington Bureau
September 19, 2007 WASHINGTON - Dole Food Co. Inc. has recalled nearly 5,000 bags of its Dole Hearts Delight salad mix after a test by a Canadian food safety agency found E. coli bacteria in the product in a Canadian store. The salad mix also was being sold in a number of U.S. states, including Illinois.

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Watch Sunny Gault's show Viral featuring Fearless Cooking here at Veoh.

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See Grace cook mussels for the first time. Will she overcook them? Will she be able to cook in a stranger's teeny tiny Parisian kitchen?

Java Jolt Pie

My second Paris episode where I overcome my trepidation of cooking mussels is on the way. In the meantime here is a very short episode where I make a simple retro treat in no time. High octane coffee and dessert all in one. This pie didn't take more than 30 minutes to make.